Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, acquitted for murder of Virginia Rappe in 1922, never recovered from all the bad press

That's what police called the Labor Day shindig on the 12th floor of San Francisco's St. Francis hotel, on Sept. 5, 1921. There was bootlegged booze galore and actors and actresses lounging or prancing around in various states of dress.

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The host was the biggest man in Hollywood, 265-pound Roscoe Arbuckle, 34, known to the world as "Fatty."

From a childhood of cruelty and poverty in Kansas, Arbuckle had worked his way through stints in blackface and drag on the Vaudeville stage and then to movies. There, his talents at pie-throwing and making people roar with laughter at something as mundane as eating a bowl of spaghetti turned him into one of the silver screen's first stars.

Arbuckle gave a young comedian named Buster Keaton his start, contributed the baggy pants for Charlie Chaplin's "Little Tramp," and was the first screen actor to command a million-dollar-a-year contract.

This party would end it all.

One of Arbuckle's guests was Virginia Rappe, 26, a model and bit-part actress, whose greatest claim to fame was that her portrait graced the cover of the sheet music for "Let Me Call You Sweetheart." She was the daughter of a New York chorus girl who died when the child was 11.

Model Virginia Rappe.

Rappe's pretty face and flair for fashion and drama eventually brought her to Hollywood.

It's not known exactly how Rappe ended up in Arbuckle's suite. She had known the comedian for about six years and, by some accounts, Arbuckle had long been smitten. By other accounts, he wanted nothing to do with her, and especially did not want Rappe or any of her buddies drinking his liquor.

But there she was around noon, sipping orange blossoms. With her was Bambina Maude Delmont, a shady character with a history of criminal activities.

Somehow, after hours of drinking, Rappe ended up in Arbuckle's bedroom, shrieking and writhing in agony, nearly naked, shreds of tattered clothes clinging to her body.

Delmont and several other guests dumped her in a tub of ice water to revive her. Then they called the hotel doctor. A shot of morphine knocked her out through the night, but she was worse in the morning.

Her condition continued to deteriorate.

Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton in a scene from the 1918 film "Bellboy."

By the time she got to a hospital, Rappe had a raging infection from a ruptured bladder. She died five days after the party.

Delmont cried murder to police, press, and anyone who would listen.

About an hour after the party started, she said Arbuckle had grabbed Rappe and dragged her to his bedroom. "I've wanted you for five years," Delmont recalled him saying as he slammed the door.

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"They were in the room a quarter of an hour when we heard a terrific scream," Delmont said. When he emerged, covered with sweat, Rappe was on the bed. "I'm dying. He did it, Maude," Delmont quoted Rappe saying.

Delmont's theory was that Arbuckle had raped the helpless girl, and his great weight had crushed her during the attack. A grand jury agreed.

"'Fatty' Arbuckle Accused of Slaying Film Actress," was the Daily News headline on Sept. 12, 1921.

He came to trial on Nov. 14. Delmont, who had filed the complaint, changed her story so many times that the prosecution decided she was too unreliable to testify.

There was also the matter of a telegram she had sent to friends that read, "We have Roscoe Arbuckle in a hole here. Chance to make some money out of him."

Conflicting medical testimony suggested that Rappe's ruptured bladder — which was exhibited in court — might have been caused by pressure from a great weight. But it might just as easily have been the result of a botched abortion, or one of the diseases, such as gonorrhea and cystitis, that Rappe was reported to have. Given her history — five abortions before age 16 and one out-of-wedlock child — anything was possible.

In Arbuckle's version of the story, he had gone into his room to change and found Rappe in the bathroom, drunk and vomiting. He picked her up and put her on the bed, whereupon she started shrieking and tearing off her clothes. Rappe's history once again made this plausible, since she was famous for noisily ripping off every stitch when she got drunk.

After 44 hours, the jury deadlocked. In February, a second trial also resulted in deadlock. Finally, in a third trial that ended on April 12, 1922, a jury decided, in five minutes, that the case was bunk, and that he was not guilty. "Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel that a great injustice has been done him," the jury foreman told the court.

Still, he woukld never recover. The cost of the trials wiped out the comedian's fortunes and the bad press destroyed his image. For a time, he was banned from films. Worst of all, his fans deserted him, so he had no audience when he was allowed to make movies again.

He spent the last years, before his death from a heart attack in 1933, directing under an assumed name.

Today, Fatty Arbuckle's films are mostly forgotten. When people do think of him, the horrific image of a fat man crushing a girl during a rape is usually what springs to mind. Decades after his death, three of his comedic descendants — John Belushi, John Candy and Chris Farley — had considered playing the silent screen pioneer. But all died before they could make the movie to set the record straight.